Tag Archives: EIFF 2026

EIFF 2026 – First Zone

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EIFF 2026 – First Zone (De Eerste Zone),
Directed by Thom Lunshof,
Starring Hadewych Minis, Violet Braeckman, Oona De Kok, Aus Greidanus Jr.

Fenna (Hadewych Minis) is living alone, in what looks like an industrial cathedral, which actually turns out to be an enormous offshore wind turbine, one of the few structures still above the waters in this post-climate change world. The Netherlands has always had a precarious relationship with the sea – historically a powerful maritime nation through much of European history, the sea has brought this small nation riches and trading links and influence across the globe. But with so much of the Netherlands lying below sea level, it is also enormously vulnerable to rising sea levels, with even the ingenious systems of dykes, damns, land reclaimed from the seas and more in a constant battle against nature.

In Lunshof’s First Zone, that battle has finally been lost – climate change and higher sea levels have finally overwhelmed the country, leaving a number of “zones” in various stages of flooding, where the small remaining population tries to survive.

Fenna is in Zone 1, entirely alone in her wind turbine castle – there’s an early scene during a storm where we hear someone banging on the steel door to the turbine and begging for help, but she just stand warily on the inside, doing nothing. It’s never entirely clear if there really was someone outside, or if the noises and voices were all in her head, , hallucinations from PTSD and survivor’s guilt (outside there is nothing except more sea and the odd other turbine, so perhaps the voices were imaginary?). Even if not real, it does serve to demonstrate how isolated from humanity Fenna has become. Silent for the most part, she’s simply in survival mode at any cost, no-one else counts.

Of course, she wasn’t always this way. We see her periodically open a hatch and descend into a flooded part of the turbine structure, just floating there, like an isolation tank, sometimes stroking a small box she wears on a chain around her neck, and there are flashbacks to the pre-flood world, a normal home, children, happiness. When something goes wrong with the hatch during a storm, she is forced out of the underwater exit, directly into the raging sea, and taken far from her isolated home, waking up to find she has been fished from the sea by a family group with numerous children, living on a large boat.

This is the start of Fenna’s travels, as she tries to traverse the various zones to head back to her home. She is still quiet, rarely speaking, and very wary and distrustful of any person she meets (she has been alone a long time), no matter how much they try to help her or how friendly they seem to be. On this journey she encounters numerous people, some kind, some hostile, but the one she spends the most time with is Ive (Violet Braeckman), who is the opposite of the stoic, suspicious Fenna, being open, cheerful and friendly, and, as you might imagine in this kind of story, the unusual partnership starts to have an affect of Fenna (although this is no sugar-coated, sweet tale, this is still a fierce, hard fight for survival for all of them in a world changed forever).

While the story may become slightly repetitive as Fenna encounters one group, leaves, heads to the next zone and meets more, repeat, I think that’s actually part of the point: there is no big scene or sudden action or revelation here, it is a slow-paced hard battle to remain alive in this world. Cinematographer Sami El Hassani fills the screen with some amazing visuals, from the industrial Gothic of the part submerged turbine to wide landscape/seascape vistas, all shot using real-world Dutch locations, which adds some verisimilitude to the scenario.

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(director Thom Lunshof (right), with actors Hadewych Minis (left) and Violet Braeckman (centre) at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival, talking with the Filmhouse audience. Images from my Flickr, click on the pics for the larger versions)

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It isn’t all just seascapes either, there are little plots of low-lying land still just above the water, where some eke out a living, and then shallows, barely waist-deep, filled with water-based foliage, traversed by wooden walkways (reminiscent of the Fens in the UK). Nico Maas’s superb, low-fi soundtrack – slightly reminiscent of slide-guitar king Ry Cooder, especially his Paris, Texas music – fits El Hassani’s visuals perfectly. Combining these visuals and soundscape with solid performances from Minis and Braeckman, and you have a slow-burn but compelling tale, in a setting that’s dangerously close to being real and not just fantasy. A tale not just of survival, but of what we can easily lose – our shared humanity – if survival becomes our only goal, because survival is not the same as living.

First Zone was a World Premiere at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – Hungry

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EIFF 2026 – Hungry
Directed by James Nunn,
Starring Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michel Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone, Jim Meskimen, River Codack

This was part of the Midnight Madness where, as the film festival organisers put it, we watch “f**ked up movies”, and the “Hungry” is, as some of you will have guessed, is as in the old family game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”, but of course they can’t use that title for their movie (which does indeed feature ravenous hippos!), so hence “Hungry”. We’ve had sharks, giant snakes, crocs and gators and piranhas, but this time, down in the deepest bayou country, there are feral hippopotami!!

Yes, angry, feral hippos – local legend in the swamplands around New Orleans holds that in the early twentieth century, there was a problem with cattle, so someone had the bright idea to import hippopotami from Africa, with an idea they’d be better suited to the conditions in the state, then breed them for slaughter. But that’s just a legend, right? Right?

Sistine (Madison Davenport) is trying to have a break with her bestie, Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) in New Orleans. Struggling to look after her ill mother, pay the mounting medical bills and hold down a job with a jerk employer (who phones her for work during her holiday, yes, he is that big a swine). Hannah meets Rodrigo (Michel Curiel) and his boss Walker (veteran actor Joaquim de Almeda), who runs swamp tours, with guaranteed views of the state’s alligators, and she decides to book the pair of them on the tour to distract Sistine (who isn’t keen on it, but is talked into it).

Next morning, hungover, they join the tour, alongside a family group and a lone businesswoman, Dionne (Tracey Bonner). Unknown to all aboard, Dionne has promised her kids a photo of the biggest alligator in the swamps, but this means going off the usual routes for tour boats, so she covertly bribes Rodrigo, who is in charge of the boat, to take them to a likely site. Luckily for them the biggest alligator is geo-tagged, so they can focus in easily on his location… Except he isn’t there. What they don’t know, but we do because it was in the opening sequence, was we saw a giant gator hunting in the swamps, only to be ambushed by something bigger and more powerful…

They soon find their gator – well, bits of it. And they are understandably worried about what the hell could take down such an enormous apex predator in its own environment? And, well, I’m pretty sure that those of you who, like me, enjoy a fun creature feature will guess what happens next – there’s an attack by a largely unseen something, they are stranded, the fact they are well off the normal tour boat route so not likely to be spotted easily comes out among recriminations, and people start being picked off…

Like I said, I think most of us know how this is going to go, the numbers are going to be reduced, one by one, there will be sudden threats and the equally sudden relief of that tension when they survive, at least until the next incident. Plans to help themselves if no rescue turn up are formulated, ideas exchanged, and meanwhile they know they are in constant mortal danger. The game now becomes who will make it through and who is going to be chomped??

There’s the usual roster of characters, the ones you like and root for to survive, the ones you suspect will die in some sort of heroic attempt to save them all, and of course there are ones you think deserve to be chomped up. Walker a hunter as well as tour guide, is an obvious stand-in for Quint from Jaws, and delights in telling them that hippos are mostly vegetarian, and they’re not trying to eat you for food, like most predators, they are doing it for fun!

So no, other than being hippos, there isn’t a lot new in this creature feature, but it’s not trying to pretend it is rewriting the sub-genre, it’s rolling with it, and it is inviting us to roll with it too. This is made by people who clearly love a good monster movie, know the rules, know what we expect, and are happy to serve it up. It may not break any moulds, but it knows what it is doing, and who its audience is – this is one to watch, late evening, with your friends and some pizza and food and just laugh and shriek, and enjoy it. I think my only surprise here was, that despite a number of kills, the gore level is fairly low, but then it does feel like they’re going for an uncomplicated, fun beast feature.

Hungry will appear on Sky Cinema in September

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point

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EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point,
Directed by Jake Kuhn, Noah Stratton-Twine,
Starring Alyth Ross, Dashiell Upton, Isobel Laidler, Jack Redmayne, Jason Hogan, Mat Wright, Mike Mackenzie, Oliver Woolf, Os Leanse

Now here we a delightful wee oddity – and I use the word “oddity” as a positive one. Peril is one of that small but hugely fun trend of really independent movies, the type made by a bunch of friends working together, using whatever money they can scrape together and whatever resources and locations they can get a hold of. Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne) is a sound designer with problems – he’s a bit shallow but desperate to make his mark in “the industry” (he loves telling everyone he meets he’s “in the industry”), but his colleagues are giving him a rough time over his work so far, which falls short of what the legendary director PW (Os Leanse), is looking for.

Oh, and despite living in the upper levels of a multi-storey flat in London, he finds a crab lurking under his sofa. Which gives him a nasty nip.

After a stormy meeting with Jim’s colleagues, PW sees him and declares he’s the man he need – to the surprise of the same colleagues who had been telling him how bad his earlier efforts were. But PW thinks he sees a kindred soul, someone who will go that extra mile to help him realise his vision. And what’s his vision? Well he wants some sort of sound that’s never been heard before. Oh sure, that’s easy to find and record…

PW also wants the voice of the “sandwich girl” from a previous production, and so Jim is dispatched with his recording equipment to the tiny island of Pincer Point, to find this vague sound PW craves and to find the girl and persuade her to be recorded too. Easy, right?? Except the girl has vanished, and the island is populated by a range of bizarre, oddball characters – imagine some of the odder background characters from Spaced or the village in Hot Fuzz, and the girl, Marina (Alyth Ross) has vanished. And the man, Hollis (co-director Stratton-Twine), who is renting him a place to stay on the island turns out to be the brother of the missing girl.

Not that many seem that bothered about her being missing – in fact Hollis, the town drunk, seems more put out that Jim came to record his sister and not him (“I can do a woman” he complains). In time-honoured tradition he finds out bits and pieces from local characters, such as an old sea dog in the pub, or from Hollis. They all point to an old legend, of Sye Telson, who selects certain people to join his crew for ten thousand years, taking their very souls. And apparently Jim is just the type the captain likes…

 

This was such a good-natured hoot – funny and warm, making the most from its tiny budget, indeed often making something inventive and great out of the lack of big resources. In many ways it reminded me of other Indie flicks I have really enjoyed in recent years, like the fabulous Hundreds of Beavers. And like that film, on hearing the cast and crew talking about it after the screening, you get the impression they had as much fun making this as we had watching it, and that permeates this tiny budget, British indie flick. This is one to watch with a bunch of friends.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest At Every Instant of its Flight

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EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight,
Directed by Theodore Schaefer,
Starring Constance Shulman, Daniel Zolghadri, Gus Birney, Jack Haven, John Early, Roberta Colindrez

The 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival – the oldest, continually running film festival on the planet – kicked off late this week, as Edinburgh embraces its traditional August festival frenzy (the International Festival and Fringe are already going, the Book Festival opens this weekend, it’s insane how many shows and events there are in our compact city in August). Late last night was my first screening for the 2026 edition of the EIFF, and it was a world premiere, no less! Theodore Schaefer brought us a hugely enjoyable Indie flick, with a very long title: The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight.

That mouthful of a title likely refers to one of Zeno’s paradoxes (recorded by Aristotle), which considered the flight of an arrow, something seemingly swift, but, he argued, at any given instant that arrow occupies a fixed space and therefore, within that instant it is not really moving. Given Arrow’s Raymond Carver-style series of individual short narratives, which then start to overlap, this seems appropriate, as, through the various characters and their individual narratives we are seeing individual slices of time, moments offered up for observation, but also, of course, able by the end to see an entire tale, like stepping back from a close look at a detail on a tapestry to take in the entire thing.

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(director Theodore Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler, and actor Jack Haven, talking with the film fest crowd after the screening, pic from my Flickr, click for the larger versions on my Flick stream)

There are three main stories here, at first seemingly not connected, although eventually we will see the threads pulling them together. The woman with a suitcase (Constance Schulman), is possibly the closest to the philosophical arrow of Zeno, in that we glimpse her repeatedly throughout the film, starting with confusing glimpses of her in various spots around the city. Sitting on a bench, by the river, passing a building. Each time, to her shock she sees someone else – passing in a car, leaning out of an apartment window – who looks exactly like her. These form the opening, intercut with rapid scene changes, interspersed with fast-moving glimpses of New York, set to a jazz score, mirroring the Suitcase Woman’s own confusion at what is going on, and reinforcing the central idea that what we interpret as a grander narrative is really made up of frozen moments of time (not unlike analogue film itself, single frames, each capturing a split second of time, then run at speed to create what we see as a moving image).

In the main strands we see a pair of younger people, including Violet (Gus Birney), bored with their lack of prospects, working in an arcade, dreaming of some way out, even if it involves committing a crime, while in another, we see a woman, Sinopia (Gus Birney again), a professor, in the middle of an affair, but questioning her life and her choices, especially of her committing to her fiancée for a possible wedding. The final main strand sees Jade (Birney again, really earning her pay here!), this time a hustler, a gambler and a pickpocket, but one with a conscience – after picking some wallets in a busy bar she finds one with a suicide note in it, and follows the person she lifted it from, in an attempt to help.

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Arrow is one of those films where summarising some of the plot really doesn’t do it justice, however. This is one of those little jewels that Indie cinema sometimes offers up to movie lovers, it’s a film to experience. Not that the overlapping structure of the stories isn’t important, but it’s more about experiencing it and the way the different angles of the different stories keep changing our expectations and our notion of what is happening, which I found very satisfying (I’m sure some might find it annoying, but it worked beautifully for me).

Director Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler and actor Jack Haven (who you may recall from the excellent I Saw the TV Glow, which I reviewed here previously), were on hand to chat to the audience after the premiere, and their talk reinforced the impression I had from the film itself, that this was a labour of love. Shot on 16mm film stock, giving it a grainy edge with its black and white film, and the jazz score, the fast-moving intercut scenes of the city between events, it reminded me very much of a lot of avant-garde films from the 1960s and 70s, when film-makers were playing with what you could do with the medium.

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And indeed at the after-film talk, Schaefer confirmed that they were very much inspired by those older films from the 60s and 70s US indie scene, French New Wave and especially some from Eastern Europe, such as the Czech New Wave, while the choice of analogue 16mm, black and white film with the jazz score just suits the New York location perfectly. An absolute delight for Indie film fans.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films